nd agitators, though deriving a peculiar force in the first
half of the century from the doctrines and teachings of Fichte and
Schleiermacher, is but the principle to which in all ages suffering and
wrong have made their vain appeal--the responsibility of all for the
misery of the many and the enduring tyranny of the few. Indignant at
the spectacle, the Nihilist in orthodox Russia applies his destructive
criticism to all institutions, civil, religious, political, and finding
all hollow, seeks to overwhelm all in one common ruin. The
Emancipation of 1861 was to the Nihilist but the act of Tyranny veiling
itself as Justice. It left the serf, brutalized by centuries of
oppression, even more completely than before to the mercy of the boyard
and the exploiters of human souls. Michel Bakounine, Kropotkine,
Stepniak, Michaelov, and Sophia Perovskaya, whose handkerchief gave the
signal to the assassins of Alexander II, were but actualisations of
Tourgenieff's imaginary hero Bazaroff, and for a time, indeed,
Bazaroffism was in literary jargon the equivalent of Nihilism. If at
intervals in recent years a shudder passes across Europe at some new
crime, attempted or successful, of Anarchy, if Europe notes the
singular regularity with which the crime is traced to Italy, and is
perplexed at the absence of all the usual characteristics of conspiracy
against society--for what known motives of human action, vanity or
fear, hope or the gratification of revenge, can explain the silence of
the confederates of Malatesta, and the blind obedience of the agents of
his will?--if Europe is perplexed at this apparition of a terror
unknown to the ancient world, the Italian sees in it but the operation
of the law of responsibility. To the nameless sufferings of Italy he
ascribes the temper which leads to the mania of the anarchist; and the
sufferings of Italy in their morbid stage he can trace to the betrayal
of Italy by Europe in 1816, in 1821, in 1831, in 1848, and supremely in
1856. As Europe has grown more conscious of its essential unity as one
State system, diplomacy has wandered from such conceptions as the
Balance of Power, through Gortschakoff's ironic appeal to the equality
of kings, to the derisive theory of the Concert of Europe. But
Communism and Anarchism have afforded a proof of the unity of Europe
more convincing and more terrible, and full of sinister presage to the
future.

A third aspect of this revolt of misery is Social